SoftBank, a Japanese multinational investment holding company, will establish two new subsea cable landing stations for the East Asia to North America (E2A) submarine cable system in Japan. The landing stations will be built in Tomakomai City of Hokkaido Prefecture and Itoshima City of Fukuoka Prefecture. E2A is a subsea cable system that will link major digital hubs in Asia and North America, with landings in Maruyama (Chiba, Japan), Toucheng (Taiwan), Busan (South Korea) and Morro Bay (California, USA).
Readers would recall that on March 21 this year, Japan’s SoftBank had signed a contract to join a consortium with South Korea’s SK Broadband, Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom, and Verizon Business Global LLC to build the E2A cable system. The consortium selected Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) to build a state-of-the-art transpacific fiber optic network that spans approximately 12,500km and is designed to significantly enhance digital connectivity between Asia and North America.
In a press release, SoftBank revealed that it was selected by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of the Government of Japan to build the two landing stations as part of an initiative to strengthen the nation’s digital infrastructure by multiplying international submarine cable routes.
Shedding light on the choice of locations it said that the two facilities will help diversify geographical risk. “Hokkaido (the northernmost main island) and Kyushu (the southernmost main island) – particularly Fukuoka Prefecture – are expected to see an increased concentration of digital infrastructure as they serve as core regions capable of substituting and complementing infrastructure already established in the central Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas.”
It further explained, “Tomakomai City and Itoshima City are located in optimal locations for routes that connect Asia and North America. Their sufficient distance from existing landing stations—including the SoftBank Maruyama Landing Station located in Minamiboso City, Chiba Prefecture near Tokyo—also makes them optimal for geographical risk diversification.”
The E2A cable will integrate the latest advancements in submarine network technology, featuring:
- 12 fiber pairs (FP) delivering capacity of more than 192Tbps
- Open Cable System architecture, enabling seamless scalability and multi-operator connectivity
- 18kV power feeding technology, optimizing efficiency across all subsea infrastructure
- Optimized latency to support next-generation computing applications and digital services
